I was having trouble with my Sonos setup last week. So I wrote this edited note to the CEO of Sonos

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I was there in tech in 1989. I thought it was all going to change the world, that we’d all be so much better off.

Circa 1990, my brother and I were sitting around in my Mom’s kitchen. My brother started in marketing in the mid 80’s. He’s gone on to have a good career, was the Creative Director at a big agency in Denver.

He’d already seen typesetting be replaced by Quark.

Now he was using Quark to create ads. My brother wasn’t bright eyed about tech, as I was. He saw it different. Because my brother was born an artist – he painted. He saw value in paint brushes and canvass. He saw the computer as necessary, not as essential.

So there we were. I was drinking tech Kool-Aid, my brother was sleeping with one eye open. I’m going on and on to Mom about how great the future was going to be. My brother paused, had an Orwellian thought. He’s always been so thoughtful. He said to my Mother, “entire gene pools of people are going to become unemployable. The government will have to pay people to stay home”.

My brother was right, I was wrong. Today, tech is mainly about eliminating the human and reducing the amount of meaningful interaction we have with each other.

Tech certainly made our life more convenient. But convenient isn’t better. Because in so many ways, our digital way of life is so wrong. Because it’s counter to who we are as humans.

I was there when everyone was up in arms about Microsoft, their so-called monopoly, when the government got involved. Any rule over us that Microsoft had is puny compared to the power that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple have over us.

We’ve literally outsourced our memory, key functions of our brain to Google. Facebook and social media have all but wiped out our democracy. Millions of people now, question if there’s truth. Amazon has all but wiped out retail. Now they’ve set their sight on taking over our food supply. Starting a business means having an App. Who controls the App? Apple. So in essence, Apple plays a big role in the success of one’s business.

Look no further for evidence of our societal decline than those next to you. Today when you go to lunch, or go outside, or you’re in your car at a stop light, look around. Notice how many are face down in their phones.

Where we are today is not progress. We’re not better off.
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How much longer are going to go on like we are? What’s it going to take, for people to wake up? If we had any sense we’d take our tech, our social media logins and do this